The Right Side of Wrong Read Online Free PDF

he was known, had served as the elevator operator since before anyone could remember. He once told Ned that his mama was born a slave on a plantation in southern Mississippi.
    He waved a greeting from his perch on his wooden stool beside the control panel. “Mr. Ned, Judge O.C.”
    They stepped aboard and waited for Jules to close the doors, then the accordion safety gate. He pushed the button with an arthritic thumb and for once stepped beyond his own self-established boundaries. They usually talked of his eleventh wife, Lily, but there was sadness in his watery eyes. “Mr. Ned, I’m worried plumb sick about Mr. Cody.”
    â€œHe’s gonna be fine, Jules.” Ned gave him a familiar pat on the shoulder. “And you can call him Cody. He’ll earn a Mister when he grows up some more.”
    â€œNawsir, Mr. Cody’s jus’ fine by me, if that’s all right. You let me know if there’s anythang I can do for him. I’ll send him a mincemeat pie if it’ll make him feel any better.”
    â€œI’ll check with him and see what he’s hungry for, when he wakes up. The doctor says he’ll be fine.”
    The shaky elevator vibrated to a stop and Jules opened the gate and door. “You want me here in twenty minutes, Judge?”
    Without wondering how Jules knew he’d called a recess, O.C. nodded. “Twenty it is.”
    â€œAll right then.”
    For the first time in several months, Judge O.C. Rains didn’t have a wire flyswatter on his desk when Ned followed him through the office door.
    O.C. scowled and threw his robe over the back of a quarter-sawn oak chair piled with papers. “Close the damn door. Were you raised in a barn? That outside office is colder than a well-digger’s ass.” He stretched back in his matching wooden desk chair and folded his fingers across an almost flat stomach.
    Ned always thought O.C. was poor as a snake. Most people said the cantankerous old judge was slim, but to Ned’s eye, he was too skinny to be in good health. “I reckon it’s because there’s over two feet of snow on the ground and the temperature is still in the teens.”
    â€œYep. Haven’t seen weather like this since before the war.” O.C. pondered the snowdrift on the granite windowsill.
    â€œWho’s that little pissant you got working for you out there?”
    â€œAw, don’t be too hard on the kid, Ned. J.T. Boone’s so green the sap’s running out of his ears, but I figured to let him help me out here for a while until he gets some experience.”
    â€œIf he lives long enough.”
    O.C. sighed. “Ain’t it the truth? One of these days he’ll learn how to stay out of the way of irritable constables. I believe Sheriff Griffin will have him out of my court room and in a car purty soon. How’s Cody?”
    Ned pitched his felt hat on O.C.’s cluttered desk and sat in the only chair that wasn’t full of stacked papers. His eyes burned for a moment in the presence of his lifelong friend. It was the only emotion he allowed himself, other than a barely-corralled temper.
    He cleared his throat to relieve the ache. “He…” Ned paused when his voice broke, swallowed, and tried again. “He ain’t worth a fiddler’s fang-dang right now, but Doc Patterson says he’ll be fine after a while. His arms and legs are starting to work, but he still ain’t awake.”
    Choking down a lump in his own throat, O.C. unconsciously twisted back and forth in his swivel chair. “He’s tough. I went by to set with him this morning before I came in.” O.C.’s speech pattern wandered without conscious thought or restraint between his college education and country roots. “That redheaded wife of his was sitting beside the bed, holding his hand and talking quiet to him. I don’t think she even knew I was standing in the door. She’d been there